What is a Young Carer - A Small Introduction
By definition: a young carer is someone under 18 who helps look after someone in their family, or a friend, who is ill, disabled or misuses drugs or alcohol.
But in reality a young carer is human. Just like any other child and deserves just as much of a chance as any other child would get.
How are young carers lives different? People often ask me this, and the massive majority of the difference is in what they do around the home.
Practical tasks, such as cooking, housework and shopping.Physical care, such as helping someone out of bed. Emotional support, such as talking to someone who is distressed.Personal care, such as helping someone dress, managing the family budget and collecting prescriptions. They may help to give medicine, help someone communicate, look after brothers and sisters and many other things.
Being a young carer is massively straining on a child's life, but over 700,000 young people in the UK, live this life daily. This is undeniably tough on them, which is why I came up with the idea behind "The Carers Companion"
A young carer, no matter how young or how old, needs a support. Almost like a backbone to hold them up through life. However funding is tight, and they cannot always have a 1-1 support worker to talk to, this job is very much 9am-5pm and after that time the children are very much alone. But not anymore!
The Carers Companion aims to combat this, giving practical tips tricks and advice aimed directly at young people, to help them at any point. That is right, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week! And because the carers companion is theirs to keep, it can become personal to them, with places for them to add their own information, notes and expand the book to suit their own needs.
This way, thousands more young people can be supported, and shown the love and care they deserve.
The sad reality is, we cannot improve the lives of every young carer physically. We cannot make illness go away, or fix problems at home, but we can ease the strain, and remind them to look after themselves to.
This is The Carers Companion, and this can be life changing. <3
Stay Smiling
Love Tasha
